New binoculars from leica (4 Viewers)

[FrankD]

Lookee lookee what I just wrapped my hands around at the American Birding Expo.


Phonescoped pic through the Noctivid. Full-sized photo can be found here.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73029961@N07/29448408170/in/datetaken-public/

 

[Troubador]

Don't keep us in suspense Frank, what did you think of the view??

Lee

 

[henry link]

Thanks for the photos, Frank. Two oddities I see in the phonescoped image are, firstly, a strong distortion that causes the ovals formed by the scope fronts to lean to the right on the right side and to the left on the left side, and pretty severe off-axis vignetting that causes a pattern of "swirl bokeh" in the background trees. The phone or the binocular?

The bright outer ring in the background diffraction disks suggest spherical under-correction, the usual thing in binoculars.

Henry

 

[FrankD]

Don't keep us in suspense Frank, what did you think of the view??

Lee

Lee,

They are very reminiscent of both the SF and the SV in the sense of the immersive image, flat field and huge sweet spot. I can detect that last little bit of slightly out of focus image in the last 5% of the field of view but only when I go looking for it. The image is bright, entirely color neutral and colors are very well saturated.

Henry,

I will see if I can handle them again to see if those issues were the phone or the binocular.

 

[FrankD]

Henry,

I tried to see that elongation/bending effect when just looking through the Noctivids and could not readily detect it. I then tried recreating the image with just the phone and by standing 8 times closer and couldn't recreate it there either. Possibly a result of combining the two? Will edit this post in a minute with pics of both the ocular and through the objective end.

 

[FrankD]

Another phonescoped shot.....

Original can be found here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73029961@N07/29120020853/in/datetaken-public/

 

[kabsetz]

Frank,

Could you measure the diameter of the eyelens? It looks quite large.

Kimmo

 

[A2GG]

Henry,

I tried to see that elongation/bending effect when just looking through the Noctivids and could not readily detect it. I then tried recreating the image with just the phone and by standing 8 times closer and couldn't recreate it there either. Possibly a result of combining the two? Will edit this post in a minute with pics of both the ocular and through the objective end.

The ocular lenses are very large. This coupled with the long ER makes me
think the NVid should be very comfortable for us eyeglass/spectacle
wearers.

 

[elkcub]

Frank,

Could you measure the distance between the objective centers and also tell us the IPD setting?

Thanks,
Ed

 

[FrankD]

Kimmo, Ed,

I didn't have a ruler, measuring device with me but came up with a rudimentary way of recording the two measurements for when I can get to a measuring device. In addition, I asked the Leica rep for the information right at the end of the show today. He said he was going to try to get the info for me tomorrow.

 

[SivaL]

Another phonescoped shot.....

Original can be found here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73029961@N07/29120020853/in/datetaken-public/

The pictures are great Frank. The picture of the trailer is sharp with pincushion distortion away from the center. The way the top of the trailer and the edge of the road at the bottom bending in looks dramatic.

Do you sense that when viewing through the NVid?

 

[ceasar]

Lookee lookee what I just wrapped my hands around at the American Birding Expo.


Phonescoped pic through the Noctivid. Full-sized photo can be found here.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73029961@N07/29448408170/in/datetaken-public/

Keep holding it and don't let go. That way you won't have to reach for your wallet to get out a credit card and buy it!

Bob

 

[BruceH]

Frank ... Any updates on when the Noctivid will be for sale in the United States?

 

[henry link]

Another phonescoped shot.....

Original can be found here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73029961@N07/29120020853/in/datetaken-public/

Thanks, Frank.

Part of the distortion pattern seems to be caused by the plane of the camera lens not being perfectly centered or parallel to the plane of the binocular eyelens. That causes vertical lines in the second photo to converge toward the bottom of the photo (the same way that the major axes of the ovals in the first photo converge toward the bottom). Tough to get good alignment when you are handholding. That wouldn't explain the pincushion curvature of horizontal lines, which has to come from the phone or binocular or more likely a combination of both. A photo of straight lines from the phone camera alone would give us an idea of how much and what kind of distortion it is contributing.

Interaction between camera and binocular distortions is one reason I prefer to image distortion by photographing grid patterns through the front end of the binocular, which reduces the grid size to a small nearly distortion free area in the center of the camera field.

Henry

 

[Binastro]

Some cameras and phones correct lens distortion in camera.
Also if the phone camera lens is a zoom the distortion will vary.
I have also seen circular halos taken with camera phones where the distortion is dependent on position angle and not consistent.
It was clear the binocular and camera phone lens were not parallel.

 

[Vespobuteo]

Frank,

Could you measure the diameter of the eyelens? It looks quite large.

Kimmo

25 mm.
I used some high res product photos to measure it.
Same diameter as Swaro SV.

 

[Vespobuteo]

Sorry I didn't think to make a note of this when I tried the Nvid at Bird Fair, but I don't recall anything about the focusing speed that made me think they were exceptionally fast or slow, although the Leica website does mention quote 'extremely fast focusing' unquote.

Lee

2 turns is not fast,
slow focus speed and limited FOV is probably
where you loose the most ID:s
not due to magnification or resolution.

 

[elkcub]

"No one complains of rolling ball in the Fuji and Nikon porros"

That is because the users are mostly big hairy chested sailor dudes who are hardly affected by such trivial fluff.

My 140 lb. and easily injured self, however, having been sensitized (educated!) by this very forum, and seeing the very tiny if any pincushion or barrel distortion in these Fujinons, unfortunately does notice the dreaded RB. This is quite inoffensive in the 7x50 due to the narrow 52deg apparent field, just not much ball there to roll. In the 8x30 however, with its pleasant 60deg field, it's quite noticeable...for about the first 5 minutes, about the same as in the Swarovision for me. I can take it.

Indeed, Ed, a field flattener might reasonably be expected to flatten the field or reduce field curvature, but that is not what they seem to do in the FMT-SX Fujinons, which have a considerable 3 diopters center to edge. Their "field flatteners" apparently correct off axis astigmatism, and as a result the binoculars can be focused sharp as you please at the edge, except for lateral color. I expect that Fujinon's "false advertising" is necessitated by intelligible product naming. FMT is bad enough, a ROAAMT-SX would be kind of scary.

Ron

Hi Ron,

Astigmatism is corrected by merging the tangential and sagittal image surfaces with the Petzval surface. Depending on the overall performance objective, the Petzval can either be left alone or shaped using a field flattener lens. My preference is to retain enough field curvature to enhance 3-D spatial perception, and 3 diopters defocus at the edge of a wide field would be acceptable. That's more or less the situation with the 804 Swift Audubon, which is well corrected for astigmatism and retains adequate field curvature, — it's also true of the Swaro 8x42 SLC HD.

Ed

 

[Troubador]

2 turns is not fast,
slow focus speed and limited FOV is probably
where you loose the most ID:s
not due to magnification or resolution.

Agreed.

Lee

 

[DavidBowman]

Happens to me all the time, which is why I use Zeiss 8x32 FL for most butterflying+birding (rather than e.g. Swarovski 8.5x42 EL). Most birds that I need the bins for are far away and most insects are very close. It's kind of like tripods in nature photography. The most useful heights are ground level and high as it goes, so how well one can switch back and forth is critical to a tripod's utility.

Although there is no "free lunch", a binocular need not sacrifice focusing precision at distance to gain fast near-range focus. Several less-than-top-end bins (Brunton Epoch, Pentax Papilio, Minox HG) have successfully employed a variable-ratio focus drive to get around the limitations of conventional focus mechanisms, but so far we've not seen this from the top European makes (or from Nikon). It took forever for the Euro brands to take "field flattening" seriously, but now that they have done so (first Swarovski, followed by Zeiss, and now Leica), perhaps they will give attention to variable-ratio focus as they look for something else to improve.

--AP

Might be something interesting goig on with the Noctivid focussing system if the Leica blurb is any indication - "The focusing precision of Leica NOCTIVID binoculars is unrivaled by any other binoculars on the market: the newly designed focusing wheel enables tack-sharp focusing on even the smallest details and quickly overcomes even the greatest distances to bring distant subjects sharply into view."
Cheers David